Daytime napping is good for you, says study

Researchers at The City University of New York found that having a brief sleep improved people's ability to remember things.

Volunteers were told to memorise pairs of words. When they were tested straight afterwards and six hours later, those who had been allowed a nap of up to one hour before the retest achieved 15 per cent higher scores than the volunteers who had not been allowed to go to sleep.

The researchers told New Scientist magazine: "Traditionally, time devoted to daytime napping has been considered counterproductive."

But they added that it now seemed that sleep was "an important mechanism for memory formation".

The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, the magazine said.